Question :

I usually work in Apple’s Pages.app to do my text editing, but now someone sent me a school document that was made in MS Word. It opens just fine in Word for Mac, but when I want to print, I can’t find the “Two-sided printing” option…

How can I do Two-sided printing in Word for Mac ?

Answer :

As always, the solution is simple, you just have to know where to look and what to look for…

…anyway, here’s how-to do this in Word 16 (2021) :

Note : in older versions it is similar, but sometimes slightly different (just one of those things to know is that “Two-sided printing” is called “Duplex printing” on Windows and therefore also in older versions of MS Office for Mac…)

• open the document in Word for Mac
• press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
• click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Layout” from the pulldown menu
• in the Layout settings view, see that “Two-Sided” is listed, with the option to choose “Long Edge Binding” (for portrait mode documents) and “Short Edge Binding” (for landscape mode documents)
• > note that if “Two-Sided” is not listed here, your printer doesn’t have the option to print two-sided automatically, and you will have to do the two-sided printing manually [see below]

That’s it !

If your printer can’t do two-sided printing automatically, you can do this to get two-sided printing manually :

• open the document in Word for Mac
• press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
• click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
• in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
• then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
• when your print is ready, draw a huge arrow on the back of the printed page pointing upward like the text on the front side
• then put the page in the printer’s feeder drawer and make sure the arrow you have drawn on it is on the upside and pointing into the printer drawer and close the printer drawer
• then click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
• in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
• then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
• now look at the printed page that comes out and figure out how to put the pages in after having them printed on one side (make sure you have this correct before proceeding ; if you can’t get your head around this, just redo the above steps and print a new testpage)
• now, get ready to print the entire document :
• press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
• click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
• in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
• then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
• then wait for all even pages to print
• when done, flip over the bulk of printed paper the way you figured out to be right (using your test page as a reference) and put it back in the printing drawer
• make sure that not only the orientation is correct, but that the first page is on top and the last page is at the bottom also
• click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
• in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Odd pages only”
• then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
• then wait for all odd pages to print
• …now check if your document is printed correctly on both sides !
• if not… you have gotten your page flipping incorrect… too bad… you’ll have to redo from start…

That’s it !

enjoy 😉